For years, the promise of technology has sounded almost magical: smarter factories, faster decisions, automated services, personalized medicine, self-driving systems, and artificial intelligence that can process more information than any human ever could. But beneath all that excitement sits a quieter question: Will any of this actually make human life better?

That question is at the heart of a growing conversation around Relationships 5.0, Society 5.0, and Industry 5.0. Society 5.0, first promoted in Japan, envisions a “super-smart” society in which digital systems and physical life are deeply connected, with human well-being at the center. Industry 5.0, advanced especially by the European Commission, builds on Industry 4.0 but shifts the focus from efficiency alone to a more sustainable, resilient, and human-centered economy.

A recent article in Business and Society Review, “Society 5.0—Aiming for a super smart society through Industry 5.0,” argues that these two ideas belong together. Industry 5.0 can provide the technological foundation - AI, robotics, big data, digital twins, smart materials, and advanced networks - while Society 5.0 supplies the broader social goal: technology that supports inclusion, sustainability, health, and quality of life.

The shift matters because the previous industrial vision, Industry 4.0, was largely built around automation, productivity, and smart manufacturing. That brought enormous gains, but also understandable anxieties: job displacement, data privacy, surveillance, skill gaps, and a work culture in which people may feel they are adapting to machines rather than the other way around.

Industry 5.0 tries to correct that imbalance. The European Commission describes it as complementing Industry 4.0 by placing research and innovation in the service of a sustainable, human-centric, and resilient industry, one that moves beyond shareholder value toward wider stakeholder value. In plain language: The machine should not be the main character. People should be.

The psychological stakes of a “super-smart”........

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